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GLASGOW, SCOTLAND—Patricia Bezzoubenko watched the maple leaf go up and wiped a tear from her eye.

It was a remarkable moment for the rhythmic gymnast who has lived most of her life in Russia but was overjoyed to win gold for Canada on Friday.

“Gosh, so proud of my country and for my coaches and my parents,” she said with a shy smile.

The 17-year-old captured her second gold medal of the Commonwealth Games, winning the individual all-around title a day after she led Canada to victory in the team event. Later Friday, swimmer Katerine Savard made it a double-gold day for Canada by winning the women’s 100-metre butterfly in a Commonwealth Games record time of 57.40 seconds.

More gold could be coming when Bezzoubenko competes in four individual events — hoop, ball, clubs, ribbon — on Saturday. She could win all four.

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“I will try,” she said.

Canada's Patricia Bezzoubenko competes in the ribbion event en route to individual all-around gold in rhythmic gymnastics at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on Friday. (BEN STANSALL / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Canada has four gold medals at the Games. Swimmer Ryan Cochrane won the 400-metre freestyle on Thursday.

Bezzoubenko was born in Vancouver, but her parents returned with her to Moscow when she was just 4. When Bezzoubenko was 13, Russia’s national team coach placed a call to Canadian coach Svetlana Joukova — who is Russian-born — suggesting she take a look at the young gymnast with dual citizenship.

Now Bezzoubenko, who lists her hometown as Thornhill, Ont., trains with Russia’s top gymnasts in Moscow, a privilege that was facilitated by Joukova, and that costs her parents about $2,000 a month. The family lives in a tiny rented apartment there. It’s a partnership that’s paying off for the sport in Canada.

“Yes, the Russians are the best in the world, so she’s being exposed to the best in the world; you can’t really ask for more than that,” said Jean-Paul Caron, a consultant with Gymnastics Canada and its former president and CEO. “And she can come back and share that with the others.”

The gymnasts have been training together for the past three weeks or so and Montreal’s Maria Kitkarska, eighth Friday, said she’s been watching Bezzoubenko train and perform with a keen eye.

“She’s very young, but she’s training very hard and she has goals and I’m sure she’ll achieve them because she’s an amazing gymnast and an amazing performer and I really love her routines, all of them,” said the 18-year-old. “I love her.”

Bezzoubenko’s programs come with much higher degrees of difficulty, so even if she drops an apparatus — which she did with the hoop on Friday — she still has the potential to win.

“She’s taking risks,” Caron said. “A lot more difficulty, a lot more movement of the apparatus, a lot more difficulty spinning with the apparatus in the air, also the flexibility that she obviously has.”

Glasgow represents Bezzoubenko’s first major Games experience, so it’s a crucial stepping stone to the 2016 Rio Olympics.

“This is very important . . . like it’s a mini Olympic Games,” Joukova said. “She’s really going to fight for Rio so for her this is amazing experience. It’s very important for her to feel that everybody cares about her, everybody loves her, and everybody is behind her, to support her and give her more power. This will stay strong in her mind.”

Canada has had a long tradition of success in the sport at the Commonwealth Games, but there’s been a gap since Alexandra Orlando swept all six gold medals eight years ago in Melbourne, Australia.

Joukova, who also coached Orlando, said she’d love to see Bezzoubenko repeat that sweep. She’ll have to clean up her hoop routine, however. Bezzoubenko, who won the Canadian junior title three times and the national senior title the past two years, was fifth after the hoop, but first in the ball, clubs and ribbon to win the gold.

“I didn’t do good with the hoop. I think I just was not good concentration, but I’ll try to make the other ones good,” she said.

Savard, from Pont-Rouge, Que., added Canada’s second gold in the pool when she outraced England’s Siobhan O’Connor and Australia’s Emma McKeon.

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